Calibra Expert Nutrition Sensitive review

This one reads Good against our criteria. A typical adult dry food closes on Good as well, so the salmon recipe keeps company with the middle of the market. A generous declared fish share and a properly dosed supplement list help it there.

Ingredients, as declared: salmon protein (35 %), rice (26 %), salmon protein hydrolysed (10 %), brewer's rice, poultry fat (7 %, preserved with tocopherols), apple pulp dried, salmon oil (3 %), yeasts, hydrolysed chicken liver (2 %), fulvic acid (0.2 %), prebiotics (mannan-oligosaccharides 120 mg/kg, β-glucans 100 mg/kg, fructo-oligosaccharides 70 mg/kg), glucosamine (260 mg/kg), dried rosemary & thyme (200 mg/kg), chondroitine sulphate (160 mg/kg), Mojave yucca (80 mg/kg), Lactobacillus acidophilus HA - 122 inactivated (15 × 109 cells/kg).

At 35%, salmon protein is a dried concentrate, and unlike a fresh-fish headline it does not shrink in the oven. Add the hydrolysed salmon at 10% and the fish is doing serious work: protein converts to 28.6% of dry matter. Hydrolysis chops protein into pieces a touchy digestion handles more easily, exactly the quality a sensitive recipe wants, and dogs find the taste hard to refuse.

Rice at 26% leads the starch with brewer's rice behind it. Estimated carbohydrate comes out at 45.1% of dry matter, a whisker under the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

Salmon oil at 3% tops up the omega 3s that the fish flesh starts. Between the protein, the hydrolysate and the oil, fish runs right through this recipe.

The two ingredients that complicate the story are poultry fat at 7% and hydrolysed chicken liver at 2%, there for energy and flavour respectively. The fat is not pinned to a bird and the liver is chicken by name, and together they rule the food out of a formal elimination diet. A dog that is merely tired of chicken, rather than clinically reactive to it, is unlikely to notice either.

Gut support is dosed in print: mannan-oligosaccharides at 120 mg/kg, beta-glucans at 100 mg/kg, fructo-oligosaccharides at 70 mg/kg and an inactivated Lactobacillus strain. Mojave yucca at 80 mg/kg is the traditional stool-odour helper, and the chelated trace minerals each carry a printed dose.

£6.45 per kilo, available in 2kg and 12kg bags.

Fed to a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, that is roughly 219 grams and £1.41 a day, using a maintenance estimate of around 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Let condition, not the calendar, set the final portion.